7 Affiliate Marketing Traffic Sources

Affiliate marketing requires that you have a website, a good offer or two to promote and the drive to make a consistent effort toward your goals. Once everything is in place the real work begins. Now you have to drive targeted traffic to your affiliate offer.

There are quite a few different ways you can drive targeted, qualified visitors to your affiliate offers. Some traffic generation methods cost money while others take time and effort. Regardless where you get your traffic you must have it in order to have a viable affiliate marketing business. The single most powerful skill you can learn is the ability to drive targeted traffic.

The first source of traffic is organic search engine traffic. Search engines can generate huge numbers of visitors who are actively looking for the affiliate product or service that you are promoting. Search traffic takes time to build and you are at the mercy of the major engines. They periodically change their ranking algorithm which causes the sites listed at the top of search results to change. Ultimately, effective search engine marketing requires consistent production of high quality content.

Once you have created a quality site with good, relevant content it is important to get links pointing to your site pages. Each link is regarded as a vote for your site by the search engines. Links from high quality, relevant, authority sites count for more than links from lesser sites. Take the time to find other sites that offer good content and are closely related to the subject of your site, contact the webmaster and offer to exchange links. If they are a quality site then you are doing your visitors a service by directing them to another great resource they might be interested in.

One way links are more powerful than exchanged links, especially if they are coming from authoritative sites. One of the most effective ways to generate one way links is by writing articles and posting them on well known article sites. An added benefit of writing articles is that they will be ranked in the search engines and drive traffic directly.

Joint venture marketing is a very effective way to create surges of targeted traffic t your website. Find another marketer in your niche and make a deal to recommend their site to your visitors if they will recommend your site to their visitors. These kinds of deals can generate significant, high-quality traffic.

Another powerful technique for creating traffic on demand is to simply buy it from the search engines trough their pay per click programs. This kind of traffic can be expensive and you have to know what you’re doing or you’ll lose your shirt but it is highly targeted and there is a tone of it available.

The other top option for buying traffic is banners. Most times banners are purchased on a per thousand impression basis instead of a per click basis. If you select well targeted sites to place your banner ads on you can generate a huge amount of highly qualified traffic to your affiliate offers for a very reasonable cost.

Finally, one of the most responsive types of traffic you will ever get is your own list of prospects or customers. Any visitor who has come to your site and signed up for your email list is likely to be highly responsive and very interested in your affiliate offers. They also have the added benefit of being free to market to. Building a list is a vital part of any long term affiliate marketing business for just this reason.

Traffic generating strategies are vital to building any affiliate marketing business. Take the time to learn how to drive traffic effectively and your affiliate business will provide you a great income.